


Find what you seek

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Majora's Mask, Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Past Character Death, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22959427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Alone and tied down to nothing and no one, Felix - known throughout Fódlan as the Meandering Sword - doesn't make it through his latest battle. That should be the end, except it isn't.-“Ah, but you’ve met with quite the terrible fate, haven’t you?” Their smile was unsettling, and Byleth looked straight through him like they didn’t even know him.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	Find what you seek

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Fire Emblem Compendium 100th Challenge zine! It combines the Alternate Universe challenge with the random adjective challenge (for which I got "ill-fated")
> 
> Please heed the warnings in the tags - this is a Majora's Mask au so everything is a bit warped and a bit sad and people are dead. If this isn't your thing please take care of yourself <3 if it is, I hope you enjoy!

When Felix opened his eyes, he was surprised. Last he’d known, he was in the middle of a battle, knee deep in mud and corpses and fast realising that he’d finally met his match. But now...there was no mud or rain in sight. Only cliffs. And Byleth.

“Ah, but you’ve met with quite the terrible fate, haven’t you?” Their smile was unsettling, and Byleth looked straight through him like they didn’t even know him.

Felix recalled the fading light, the growing chill that had spread through his limbs. Had he… Goddess. He hadn’t even realised how far it had gone. And yet here he was, still in one piece. “Why are you here?” he asked.

“To direct you,” they said simply. “Cross these cliffs, leave the town, and make your way through the field. Once there, you’ll find what you seek.” And with that, the image faded away. Byleth, who he hadn’t seen for years, left him alone again.

Felix did as asked, though he didn’t know why. He crossed the cliffs, and when he was done, he emerged in Enbarr. Except it wasn’t Enbarr, because it wasn’t destroyed by the war, and he didn’t have to fight.

Still, it was unsettling. He left quickly, only to encounter an ever worse sight. Gronder Field, not darkened by ash or stained with blood. It was just as it was, as it could have been without everything that had happened. Felix took another look around and broke into a run.

When he was across the field, he was greeted by an unfamiliar yet familiar sight. A group of citizens had a monster problem, and they needed a swordsman to clear their local place of worship out. It was the kind of job he’d done a hundred times before.

His guide to the temple was an old man, a wizened creature of the forest. He told Felix what to do, what to avoid, with endless patience. He spoke of his son, who had died on Felix’s quest while doing his duty. Felix wondered if it hurt the man when he pulled his blade from the final monster. That he had succeeded where the son failed.

“Young man…” Before he left, the old forest creature’s hand fell onto his shoulder. Felix flinched, but stayed put. “Before you go, I feel I must tell you what has been weighing on me all this time.” Felix didn’t want to hear it, but the man’s aid had been invaluable, so he kept his mouth firmly closed. “Whenever I look at you, I see my son. I miss him so much, my poor Glenn…”

Felix jerked away from his hand and ran. Back on that false Gronder Field, he looked into a pool of still water, and sure enough, Glenn was staring back at him. He wanted to scream.

The feeling didn’t abate any when he saw a familiar sight on the field. A trail of blood. Dark armour and a stained cloak. Dimitri, his lance glowing, stalking towards Felix as if he didn’t even recognise him. Felix reacted without thinking, without trying to think. He sank into a battle stance of his own. And then his blade went through Dimitri’s chest, just as it had before, and he closed his eyes against the onslaught of his memories. When he opened them again, he was back at the cliffs.

Byleth was there again, that creepy smile that didn’t look like them (because Byleth never smiled. Never) filling their face. “You’ve laid that spirit to rest,” they said. They didn’t say which spirit they meant. “Wait just a moment, and I should be able to restore your form.” They held out their hands, and warmth coursed through him. In the small pool next to them, Glenn’s face shifted into Felix’s own, except… He looked as he had as a child. It felt wrong. Felix didn’t want to think about how he felt more at home in his brother’s skin than his own.

Next, Byleth removed a bottle from their coat sleeve. When they uncorked it, a ball of light with an achingly familiar voice flew out. Annette.

Except this wasn’t Annette, just as this Enbarr wasn’t Enbarr and this Felix couldn’t be him. She didn’t recognise his name, and spoke only of her best friend Mercie, who she wanted to rescue from the clutches of the Masked Beast.

Felix didn’t have the heart to tell her, as they walked onwards to a snowy mountain Annette called Ailell, that in his past life he had killed Mercedes on Gronder Field.

Once there, Felix followed the ghost of a man with his father’s face, his father’s voice, through yet another temple. Felix didn’t want to think about how easily he had accepted the mask with his own father’s face on it.

He also didn’t want to think about what happened when he returned to the city, victorious, to hear a familiar voice. A boy with his voice, crying over the death of his father. Eager to pass him by, Felix gave him just a short pat on the head as he passed.

The child looked up. Felix recognised his own face. “Is it going to be okay, mister?”

“Of course,” he lied.

The kid looked up at him with wide brown eyes, filled with tears Felix had seen countless numbers of times in the mirror. “Promise?”

Felix turned around to leave. Annette tugged on his ear. “Hey!” she called. “That’s really mean, Felix.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

Annette didn’t reply. She didn’t say anything when they descended the mountain and made their way to Gronder Field. She didn’t say anything when Dimitri appeared, and Felix killed him with stony determination, and they ended up right back where they started.

The third direction brought Felix and Annette to a beach. And out there, on the sands...Dedue.

Felix had always thought, in life (whatever this was, Felix was sure it wasn’t life), that he had nothing more to say to Dedue. He’d vanished after the war, much like Felix had. Seeing him again like this proved him wrong, but Dedue stopped him with words of his own before Felix even opened his mouth.

“I wanted to protect him...do it in my stead, please.” It was only then that Felix realised that the sands surrounding Dedue were dark. They were not dark with water, nor shade. But he realised too late (always too late, he was always too late). There was nothing he, Annette, or Dedue could do, and he left them with only his words on Dimitri and a glimmer of hope.

Dimitri had fallen apart when everyone died. Maybe in this twisted world that made no sense, it was Dedue’s still form that pushed him over the edge. Maybe, in this twisted world, Felix wouldn’t be too late.

Wearing the face Dedue left behind, Felix surfaced in a village wracked by war. Dimitri was nowhere to be found. He tried not to let the heaviness of yet more failure weigh on his limbs, but the ensuing trial was a struggle. This whole thing was starting to feel pointless.

This time, when Dimitri appeared on Gronder Field, Felix cried. He cried for all the damn people he couldn’t save in this world, in his other life, anywhere. It was unfair. It was cruel. How many more times would he have to relive the worst moment of his life? How many times would he have to push his sword through his best friend’s chest?

Why had Byleth told him that this would bring him the peace he sought?

The fourth direction out of not-Enbarr took him to a place that looked eerily like Fhirdiad. But it was not the Fhirdiad he had last seen, nor the Fhirdiad of his childhood when the world had still been bright and unburdened.

This Fhirdiad was burned to the ground, coated in ash, and full of shuffling corpses mimicking people Felix had once known. The staff he’d once spoken to daily when he stayed in Fhirdiad, some old knights of Fraldarius. Lambert. Glenn.

Felix felt like they dragged him down, down towards the ashy ground. Every step was a trial. Every second another challenge far greater than any he’d faced before. It was just ash. They were just ghosts. And yet he could feel them clinging to every aspect of his being, every momentary thought.

Was this how Dimitri had felt, every waking hour since the Tragedy? Felix had known, of course, that everything had gone wrong. He’d known that Dimitri was suffering. He had just never been able to imagine it.

His final ordeal complete, Felix took to Gronder Field once more. This time, he was met only by silence, the wind, and the moon, threateningly close. Coming ever closer by the second.

The Enbarr that wasn’t Enbarr had a palace, and that palace that wasn’t Enbarr’s palace had a tower. He didn’t know quite how he knew that this was where he was meant to go, but he did. And he climbed.

At the top, there was a brief respite. Annette bounced from his shoulder, a bundle of light somehow containing an energy comparable to the Annette he had known in life. She reunited with a similar figure he could only presume was Mercedes. He didn’t have the time to introduce himself.

He didn’t have the time, because standing there, hunched over his spear, huddled under the weight of his cape and a thousand corpses, was Dimitri.

This time, he knew what to do. Staring at that man he had killed four times over, Felix finally knew what to do. He cupped his hands to his lips and, for the first time since the Tragedy, he called for help.

The moon, falling ever closer, was screaming. Felix knew the sounds from that false Fhirdiad; they were the sounds of all those Dimitri had lost on that day. The sounds of all those Felix had lost along the way.

But this time, instead of knowing what was coming and allowing it to crush them both helplessly, help came. He watched those giants, those ghosts, those people they both should have just moved on from, lift the weight away. He watched it as it got further, and further, until he couldn’t hear his father’s disappointed voice any longer.

Dimitri screamed. Then he fell to the ground, and the mask clattered on the stone as it fell from his face. And Dimitri...the Dimitri Felix had last seen before the Tragedy, all soft golden hair and bright blue eyes, stared up at him. Felix took one step forward. Another. “Dimitri-”

“Felix,” he said, a ghost of a smile on his face. “Thank you. For...coming back for me.”

“I-I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I hadn’t,” he said, knowing the truth of those words. He hadn’t been able to live, knowing Dimitri had died.

“Did it hurt?” Felix nodded. “Does it still hurt now?”

Felix paused. “Yes,” he admitted. Maybe it always would.

“Me too,” Dimitri said. “But maybe...maybe we can manage that pain better together.” The sun was rising on Gronder Field, and this time he walked with Dimitri, hand in hand. To a better life.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :) if you have any thoughts, please leave a comment and maybe consider following me on twitter @samariumwriting. I have.....Feelings about this piece and I would love to share them!!
> 
> Also!!!! This fic got some [wonderful art](https://twitter.com/LucDrawsThings/status/1235311648539324417) so please check Lucas out!!


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